Remember the memory game you might have played with your parents? A bunch of cards were placed face down, shuffled up, and you’d have to flip them over two at a time to find a match.

It was one of my favorite childhood games. Today, developer Sponge Forge has released Instamory for iPad. The app is absolutely gorgeous and lets you interact with the huge database of photos unleashed by Instagram‘s API.

The Instamory app shows once again why a great public API can help bring services to those who wouldn’t have used it before. Even if you’re not an advid photo sharer on Instagram, this game will appeal to you. Instamory is $2.99, and worth every penny.

Playing Memory with Instagram photos

The premise is simple, and the features are plentiful. If you’d like to play memory with your own photos, just log in with your Instagram account. If you don’t have an account, you can still play the game with public photos that are popular, featured, or match certain tags on Instagram. You can play at varying difficulties, using 6, 15 or 24 pairs of cards.

Your high scores are tracked, and you can shuffle your photos at any time to keep game play fresh. If you have a few friends to play with, Instamory really shines then.

Multi-player memory

Up to four players can sit around an iPad to play a competitive game of memory. When its your turn, the orientation of the iPad is changed so that you don’t have to move the device around to play.

My fiancée and I recently played Instamory during a camping trip and we couldn’t have had more fun. Of course we had WiFi readily available, and you’ll need to have a connected iPad to play this game. Unfortunately there isn’t an offline mode. I’d love to see something like that in the future.

A new way to interact

You can use Instamory to browse and discover Instagram photos, as you create customized sets of pictures to play memory with. You can also “like” photos and become a follower of an Instagram user right from the app. I’d like to be able to comment on photos too, making Instamory a gaming portal to replace the need for a real Instagram iPad native app.

This is the perfect app to gift to someone who has just gotten their first iPad. Furthermore, if that person is a heavy Instagram user, you’ll become their best friend for sending this one to them. Instamory is another perfect example of other things you can do with photos.